Fed probe finds 13-year-old working at Hyundai plant in Alabama

The U.S. Department of Labor is suing South Korean auto giant Hyundai Motor Co., an auto parts factory and a recruiting company after finding a 13-year-old child working illegally on an assembly line in Alabama.

The agency filed a complaint Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama to demand that Hyundai, SMART Alabama, an auto parts company, and Best Practice Service, a staffing agency, waive any profits related to the use of child labor.

The move comes after federal investigators found a 13-year-old working 50 to 60 hours a week on an assembly line in Luverne, operating machines that turned sheet metal into auto body parts, the Labor Department said.

“A 13-year-old working on an assembly line in the United States of America shocks the conscience,” Jessica Looman, administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement.

The Korean automaker is responsible for repeated child labor violations at SMART Alabama, one of its subsidiaries, between July 11, 2021, and February 1, 2022, according to the department. The child was allegedly sent to work at the component parts supplier by Best Practice, she said.

According to complaintSMART told the staffing firm that “two additional employees were not welcome on the premises due to their appearance and other physical characteristics, which suggested they were also minors.”

“Companies cannot escape responsibility by blaming suppliers or staffing firms for child labor violations when in fact they are also employers,” Seema Nanda, a lawyer at the Department of Labor, said in a news report. release.

Hyundai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

However, a spokesperson told other media outlets, including the Washington Post, that the Labor Department is seeking to impose “an unprecedented legal theory that would unfairly hold Hyundai accountable for the actions of its suppliers and set a troubling precedent for other companies and car manufacturers”.

The case marks the first time the labor department has sued a major company for allegedly violating child labor law on a subcontractor, and stems from a government investigation and a separate Reuters report that revealed the widespread and illegal use of workers migrant children at Hyundai suppliers in Alabama. .

Reuters reported In 2022, children as young as 12 worked for a Hyundai subsidiary and other parts suppliers to the company in the south of the state.

The news outlet reported on underage workers at Smart following the brief disappearance in February 2022 of a Guatemalan migrant child from her family’s Alabama home. The 13-year-old girl and two brothers, aged 12 and 15, worked at the factory in 2022 and did not attend school, sources told Reuters at the time.

The Department of Labor in fiscal year 2023 investigated 955 cases of child labor violations involving 5,792 children nationwide, including 502 employed in violation of hazardous occupation standards.

Some minors have suffered serious and fatal injuries on the job, including 16-year-old Michael Schuls, who died after being pulled into machinery at a Wisconsin sawmill last summer. Another 16-year-old worker also died last summer after getting caught in a machine at a poultry plant in Mississippi.